WHY?

WHY?

                Have you ever wondered why God has allowed sin and mayhem and war to go on so long? Why not nip it in the bud, say at the Gates of Eden? Why not put an end to it at the Tower of Babel? Well, then what about at the cross? Jesus more than paid for this planet, this universe and everyone in it at the cross. So why do sin and suffering still rules the planet?

                People like to point fingers at the Jews. They have become sort of a scapegoat for us… someone to blame for killing the Messiah… and yet we all participated in His death. You may say, “No uh uh, not me”; But if you have ever sinned, even by a wrong thought , even by not doing what the Holy Spirit prompted you to do for the good of mankind, you have betrayed the King of glory.

                We are all prisoners on this prison planet. Satan does literally own our home. God gave this world to man to rule over and to care for, but we, in turn, handed it over to Satan. It belongs to him and Jesus, when He was on this earth did not dispute the fact. Satan offered Him the kingdoms of this world and with a simple nod of the head; Jesus could have avoided His horrible death on the cross,

                Well, by doing so Jesus would have saved His own skin, but it would not had accomplished anything for us. The price for redemption was enormous…infinite! No one could buy it back… no one on this planet. We are all fallen beings…incapable of saving ourselves. The ransom can only be paid by Someone equal to or greater than the sum of the entire universe and all who live in it.

                The entire physical universe was thrown into entropy from the moment Adam and Eve sinned. Everything started to decay and die. The laws of thermodynamics kicked in. Everything is winding down. Our sin and rebellion has been given term limits… and while we may question God about this, even in our own small minds we can see that if the tree of life had remained available to us and we had become immortal sinners, there would be no hope of redemption… no end to our present darkness.

                Sometimes we treat the cross of Jesus as if it were mere play acting. We treat the blood with casual acquaintance… but the truth is there is only one way back into Eden. We must die in this present dark kingdom and we must be born again into the kingdom of Jesus Christ. Ys, Jesus bought the world back on the cross. He was the only One whose death could pay the price. Many have died for good causes, but only One Person in all of history could lay claim to being been earth’s Creator. Only One had stood in the councils of heaven and decided to make man in their image. Only One had spoken everything that exists into reality and only He could buy it back.

                So again… Why has God let it go on so long and why and how is the cross a solution to our problem? Well, let us put it this way: God can create rocks and trees and planets with a word, but when it came to mankind, God had breathed His very own Spirit into him. He had created man in his own image. We were created to be a royal family… children of the King… and if we as people are unwilling to just throw our own children away when they make a mistake, then we must know that when God created us, with the capability to be like Him, He also must have put a provision in place for our rescue if things went wrong.

                Like I said, God can create rocks and trees and planets with a simple word, but redeeming humans is infinitely more complex. He has to restore His kingdom in us before He can restore the rest of creation. We have to be brought back into the family. And just as we sold out His kingdom… our kingdom by choice, so also we must be restored by choice. We must be willing to die to this kingdom that our sins have built and to literally be born again into the kingdom of Christ.

                This is not play acting. When Jesus said that we must be born again, to Nicodemus, He stated it as emphatically as He could say it. “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God. That which is born of flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.”

                In other words, God had created us in His image and that means that His Spirit dwelt in us. We were spiritual beings, capable of carrying His Spirit in our spirit and when we chose Satan as our new king that Spirit of God had to flee from us… not to save Himself, but to save us. Sin cannot come into the presence of a holy God and live. We had become sin itself and so God had to depart from us in order to save us…in order to give us a choice to come back into His kingdom.

                So no, Jesus was not play acting on the cross. In fact He took on Him the full wrath of God that had been delayed for humanity’s sake and substituted with the blood of innocent animals until the real sacrifice could come. And when He came into the world it was said of Him by Holy Spirit inspiration: Behold the Lamb of God which takes away the sin of the world.” John 1:29

                John also announced an earth changing announcement when he said: “I baptize you with water; but He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit. (Mark 1:8) And Jesus breathed on His disciples and said           “Receive the Holy Spirit,” (John 20:22) And this is one of the first things Jesus did after His resurrection. He breathed on His disciples just as He had breathed His Spirit into Adam. He restored the Spirit in man that Adam had lost in the fall and if we will live by that Spirit, HE has promised that He will restore us into His image. Bu His indwelling Holy Spirit we can be conformed to the image of Christ.

                So we may ask why God has waited for so long. Why has He allowed sin and suffering to continue on this dark planet? But the truth is that while He could restore the physical universe with a word, HE must build His kingdom in human hearts with the same Spirit that made them in His image in the first place. We must receive that same Spirit and learn to live by it. It is a very real choice we make. We will either serve the flesh… (And from the flesh reap death), or we will serve the Spirit and from the Spirit reap eternal life. (Gal. 6:8)

                Saving the physical universe is easy for God. But saving stubborn and self-willed humans and transforming us into the image of His Son… (Romans 8:29) well… that is the challenge. Besides, if He had brought sin to an end much earlier, then we, you and I would not be here. And He has chosen a final generation upon which the accumulated knowledge of human history has been bestowed and even been made available by the internet of all things… so that we could cooperate with Him in bringing this whole messy and rebellious world to a climax.

                Many cheaper ways are offered and substitutes promised, but in reality, when we enter by faith in Christ’s death, He raises us from the dead by His Spirit … the Same Spirit that Adam lost in the fall, and with that Holy Spirit that dwells in us, He begins to remake us into His image.

                “And if Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, yet the spirit is alive because of righteousness. But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who indwells you.” Romans 8:10, 11

                We indeed belong to a different kingdom if indeed we have been born again. We live by a different Spirit. It is the same spirit that Adam lost in the fall. Jesus has restored it to us so that we can once again be conformed into His image. Simply playing church will not do what God must do in us. “For all who are being led by the Spirit of God, these are the sons of God. “ Romans 8:14

                Now you know the answer to one of this world’s biggest questions. “Why?” At present Jesus is building His kingdom in our hearts and as such, bad stuff happens in this prison planet. To a certain extent both the righteous and the unrighteous suffer from the cancer of sin… but the promise is that if we will sow to the spirit, then Jesus will return and redeem our bodies as well and we will finally be restored to all that God created us to be in the first place.